First Try At Chicago-Style Thin Crust

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Earlier this week, I posted the photos of my new cutter pans for Chicago thin crust pizza making and here as you likely guessed, it didn't take long for me to try to put it them through their paces.  I grabbed a Aurelio's clone dough formulation from the PizzaMaking.com forums and dressed it with my usual set of ingredients: Chellino Scamorza cheese, pepperoni, hot Italian sausage and some red peppers.  Finished with some parm and basil after it baked.

Consider this step one in a long journey towards my next pizza quest:  tavern cut, Chicago thin crust.

We're living at Equation Boy/Man's house and thus, using their ovens.  I haven't quite gotten enough practice to know how they'd perform.  I put the pan on a lower rack and placed my baking steel on a rack just on top of the pie.  Thinking...that there would be some thermal mass baking the top.  That, indeed, worked great.  The top of the pie came out perfectly well done.  But the bottom?  A little too well done. Check out the pizza upskirt photo below:
A little too brown.  A little too crispy.   I know that 'too crispy' sounds weird.  But it was true.  This was borderline hard.

I think that is likely because of the place I put this pan in the oven vs. say...the wrong dough formulation or temperature.  I'm going to fix all the variables (dough formulation, temperature) and just put the rack up higher in the oven.  Top it the same and see if we get a different result with the bottom of the pie.

Also, one note to myself:  I went with bulk hot italian sausage and it was a lot more coarse than the what comes stuffed into a casing.  So...I'll have to remember to go with the cased sausage going forward.

Now, I have to convince Nat - or her parents - to let me give it another shot and work up another batch of dough.

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